James City celebrates 150 years of history

Saturday

Jul 6, 2013 at 12:01 AMJul 6, 2013 at 8:46 PM

JAMES CITY — One hundred and fifty years ago, in 1863, Union officers decided to merge three encampments of “contraband” — escaped slaves from Southern plantations — because they couldn’t protect them all from Confederate raids. They pulled them all onto the peninsula of land between the Trent and Neuse Rivers, just south of the city and James City was born.

Bill Hand, Sun Journal staff

JAMES CITY — One hundred and fifty years ago, in 1863, Union officers decided to merge three encampments of “contraband” — escaped slaves from Southern plantations — because they couldn’t protect them all from Confederate raids. They pulled them all onto the peninsula of land between the Trent and Neuse Rivers, just south of the city and James City was born.

This past Friday and Saturday, the James City Community Organization (JCCO) celebrated that important anniversary with a parade, food and activities in James City, and with reenactments at the Crockett-Miller Slave Quarters located just off Williams Road behind the Coastal Carolina Airport.

Events officially began Friday at 6 p.m with an opening ceremony at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church. It was followed by a meet-and-greet that did not wrap until midnight, according to William Stevens, president of the JCCO.

Saturday officially began with a parade at 9 a.m. featuring representatives of area organizations and churches, baton twirlers, the Tryon Palace Jonkonu team and a dozen or so motorcycles from the Independent Biker club. Stevens was the grand marshal.

“It was fantastic. It was truly awesome,” said Stevens, after the parade. “We want to thank all who helped make this day and who helped in the parade.”

Family activities and concessions followed the parade at the Dixie Chemical lot off Old Cherry Point Road and at the community center where numbers of residents and guests to the area chatted.

Also open was the Crockett-Miller slave house where tours were given with local historian Ben Watford as docent, while reenactments took place form a little after 11 a.m. to around 12:30 p.m.

The slave house is located on airport property but is open for tours every third Sunday of the month, 1 to 3 p.m. or by calling Ben Watford at 638-3590 or Earl Mills at 626-3590.

Watford spoke of the house, which was originally located about where the Taco Bell on Neuse Boulevard is today. It was eventually moved to Johnson Street and finally to its present location in 1993.

Along with old tools and other historic items, a couple of face jugs, made by Watford himself, are on display. The jugs, he said, have an important historical tie with the slave cemetery on the same grounds: slaves were not allowed to put up tomb stones and so they often set a jug over the grave. Some jugs were decorated with faces — “the scarier the better, because that chased the devil away,” Watford said.

Reenactments included slave life, a slave market, a lynching, and the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, also 150 years old this past January. Samples of “white only” and “colored only” items were on display to remind visitors of the days of segregation — a rickety old tin outhouse for coloreds, for instance, stood beside a modern port-a-potty labeled “whites only.”

Some visitors to the celebration had grown up in James City and moved away. Many were visiting family in the area and decided to check out the day. Among them were Vernon and Clara Foye of Brandywine, Maryland.

“We came for a reunion,” Verno Foye said. “We’re having a great time.”

Another, Mu Octavis Taalib, came from Atlanta to visit his boyhood home and learn about its history. He was a member of the high school class of 1971 — the first year that blacks and whites attended the same high school in New Bern at J. T. Barber.

He remembers riots that broke out that first year over the celebration of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Confederate president Jefferson Davis’s birthdays. The black students had been granted only the gym to make their commemoration at the end of the day, he said, while a couple of days later the white students were given prime school time and the auditorium. Resentment over the better conditions for the Davis celebration boiled over into riots that closed the school for “two or three weeks,” he said.

Taalib said he was impressed with the event and hoped that future celebrations could be bigger.

Alderman Victor Taylor attended the event with his granddaughter, Camille Goodman. He said the event was “Great. The turnout is great. The community did a great job.”

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